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[Alec S.]

So I recently played through Beyond Good and Evil, and it provided a good example for something I've thought a lot about in terms of exploration in games.  Specifically, the combined feeling of tension and wonder of not knowing what's around the corner, and going deeper and deeper into an unfamiliar space.

In the case of Beyond Good and Evil, this takes the form of fairly unassuming doors around the city that lead to Alpha-Section facilities.  If you choose to continue into the facility, you'll go through a decent-sized optional level to recover one of the game's main resources, pearls.  These sections are all significantly different from each other, so you never quite know what to expect when you decide to delve into one.  They could include stealth segments, obstacles, chase sequences, ect...  I think these sections drive home the "investigative journalist infiltrating a corrupt organization" vibe of the game even better than the main-line missions, because of the fact that you are choosing to jump head-long into danger.  

I think another example of the feeling I'm talking about would be in the Souls games, whenever you're exploring a new area.  You've got the tension of risking losing your souls countering the excitement as to what you'll find if you keep going deeper into the area.

So what games do you think do a good job of capturing this risk/reward dynamic of wanting to explore a dangerous space?

[s0]

LA MULANA

will say something more substantial later. also i should really play BG&E at some point.

[Taky]

I personally love this mechanic - and I've sat here for 5 minutes trying to think of a game that captures it best. No luck. I'm hoping some brilliant star child comes on here and busts our a list of 10 games.

[The Translocator]

Just about any rogue-like/rogue-lite is bound to have something of a risk-reward with exploration.

[nnyei]

Man, it's been ages since I've played Beyond Good and Evil. I have fond memories of it.

But to answer your actual question, only Minecraft and Don't Starve come to mind.

[Alec S.]

Yeah, the caves in Minecraft are one of the few proc-gen things to actually give me that feeling, since they're so big and treacherous and you kinda have to make your own path through them.

[s0]

Yeah, the caves in Minecraft are one of the few proc-gen things to actually give me that feeling

dwarf fortress is even better about it. digging down into the caves and seeing what kind of creatures live there (including procgenned ancient beasts and demons) is always exciting.

exploration in procgen games can be a bit weird because it's often more about the algorithm itself than the environments it generates. so it becomes about discovering patterns and stuff which is fun itself but different from "normal" exploration. DF and minecraft are not really like that tho.

[//BARCHboi]

I think what you guys & girls are feeling is tension (Correct me if I'm wrong) on potential rewards (via cutscenes, pearls, gems, diamonds, plot advances etc) rather then good exploration.

I enjoy a minecraft cave because it is like walking through a casino - is the cave good to look at? No, if I were to take a picture and admire the picture would it be as interesting? Maybe - but it is the rewards that the cave brings that gives the interest. - Do the Dear Esther caves give the same feeling?



Left is Dear Esther - Right is minecraft

Visually we know which is better, dear Tigsources; we prefer to casino to the visual

- but of course correct me if Im wrong

[Alec S.]

I think what you guys & girls are feeling is tension (Correct me if I'm wrong) on potential rewards (via cutscenes, pearls, gems, diamonds, plot advances etc) rather then good exploration.

Oh, tension is definitely a major part of it.  But I would argue that that is as important (if not more so) than the visuals.  It gives exploration weight, friction and purpose.  Minecraft looks like a world of blocks, but feels like exploring a dangerous cave, while Dear Esther feels like walking through an art museum (actually, to be fair, I didn't play much of Dear Esther, so I can't really judge it, but that's the impression I got).

And it's not just potential rewards, but the journey you go through to get the rewards.  The geometry of the caves in Minecraft is interesting, often requiring you to take leaps or make drops that could leave you stranded.  The Pearl challenges in Beyond Good and Evil are fairly unique sequences.

[Michael Klier]

Terraria comes also to mind. I loved the game for the exploration part. If you want to find the more valuable ores/item drops you have to dig deeper into any of the biomes but you risk to drop all your current items if you die. Although the magic mirror (to teleport home) alleviates that tension to a degree.

[s0]

I think what you guys & girls are feeling is tension (Correct me if I'm wrong) on potential rewards (via cutscenes, pearls, gems, diamonds, plot advances etc) rather then good exploration.

I enjoy a minecraft cave because it is like walking through a casino - is the cave good to look at? No, if I were to take a picture and admire the picture would it be as interesting? Maybe - but it is the rewards that the cave brings that gives the interest. - Do the Dear Esther caves give the same feeling?



Left is Dear Esther - Right is minecraft

Visually we know which is better, dear Tigsources; we prefer to casino to the visual

- but of course correct me if Im wrong

you are confusing exploration with sightseeing

[//BARCHboi]

go Silbereisen tell us what is the difference between sightseeing and exploration

[s0]

sightseeing = seeing nice looking stuff, exploration = traversing a space unknown to you for the purpose of discovery.

you're saying that dear esther is "better" exploration than minecraft because it has nicer stuff to look at when exploration is much more about the "how" than the "what".

[Tuba]

DOOM (the old one, haven't played the new one yet) had lot of optional areas to explore and I'm not talking just about secrets. One good example is E1M3, at a point you see this glowing item:



But you can't get to it, so you're encouraged to explore and find a way to it, the game knows you're gonna do it and so the level is filled with traps and ambushes, even on the secret areas.

[TitoOliveira]

DOOM (the old one, haven't played the new one yet) had lot of optional areas to explore and I'm not talking just about secrets. One good example is E1M3, at a point you see this glowing item:



But you can't get to it, so you're encouraged to explore and find a way to it, the game knows you're gonna do it and so the level is filled with traps and ambushes, even on the secret areas.

I remember being amazed at that orb at the time.

[dao cowboy]

At some point I realized that my favorite thing to actually do in Skyrim was wander around in the woods.  This got me contemplating moving to the upper peninsula of Michigan.  There wasn't a lot of risk, but it was very fun to (slowly) sneak alongside a road and try to get a sense of the random encounters from a distance.  Finding alchemical ingredients was also fun even though I didn't like doing anything with them.

Procgen is really going to blow this up.  And it isn't going to be about just exploring landscapes.  I had penciled down some ideas about how you could generate NPC political/economic/social structures (based heavily on the pertinent book by Aristotle).  Someone is going to make something like that work, and then players will have the experience of exploring what the military would call the human terrain.  Exciting.

[michael_88]

Say what you will about it's faults, but Fallout 4's survival mode has a really nice tension to it. There are so many variables that contribute to your character's health – energy, hunger, thirst, disease – that exploring the wasteland for any extended period of time gets your blood pumping. The adrenaline mechanic seems tailor-made to enhance this feeling, where the longer you go killing enemies without sleeping, the more powerful you become.

Do I take my loot back now, or keep going? That building seems like it could be easy to clear, but I'm getting thirsty. Should I drink from the stream and gain radiation poisoning, or should I hoof it home and hope I make it before the thirst kills me? DAMN YOU RABBIT HOLE

[powerkraut]

I'm not sure if this is a good answer, but I feel this way about almost every stealth-based game I play. Any game where your goal is to not be seen, and if you are there is a significant consequence. I don't necessarily think it's about stealth either, because one could feel that way about a competitive multiplayer game as well. Anything that has some sense of obscurity or uncertainty or maybe risk tends to bring on this feeling, at least in my own experiences. The classic Thief games(or at least the first one because it's the only one I played) are some of my most powerful memories when it comes to this feeling.

Not to be repetitive, but it really is all about uncertainty in my opinion. It's like you are dropped into this space, and you don't receive a lot of context about the given space, and you are just told: "go do this thing". One could almost imagine it as a sort of meter about comfort level when progressing in a given space. Empty would of course be "very uncomfortable" and full would be "accustomed to space and willing to take risks". When you start off in the space, your meter is empty, but as you learn and explore the meter rises higher and higher until you are comfortable with the world around you. An important tool for raising this meter is consistent patterns in how the space is designed, which equates to how easily a player can infer what might happen. In a modern first person shooter, a level might just boil down to: go to this section -> clear area -> progress to another section -> clear area, and so by that pattern the player quickly becomes accustomed with the structure of the space they are exploring. But in something like Dark Souls, you never know what an area could hold, because the world isn't always conforming to one predictable pattern. This is why when you play Dark Souls, you get better the more you explore an area and you are prepared for everything the area throws at you. This is also why when a very avid Dark Souls player is going through their 40th playthough, all of that uncertainty has disappeared and their goals in the game have basically shifted. Dark Souls specifically also employs risk as a strategy to convey the feeling of uncertainty, as do a number of other games. I'm sure that risk can be a powerful tool to use as well, when designing towards this goal, but it all boils down to uncertainty.

I think there is a lot to be said on this feeling that many of us get when we play certain games, and there have to be design strategies and tools we can use to convey the feeling better(or worse) based on our own desires.

[s0]

I've been playing a ton of Mage Knight over the past few months and I feel like that is a good example of "tense exploration".

For those who haven't played it it's a fantasy adventure board game where all of your actions are controlled by a card deck you modify and expand as you play (very different from other deckbuilders tho). the game uses a hex map made up of modular tiles. you "explore" by drawing a new tile from a stack. so anyway, movement in this game is really expensive. there are different terrain types with different movement costs and you simply won't be able to visit every location or even most locations that show up in a given game. so the movement is part of the game's "puzzle" and instead of just making a decision bwtween e.g. conquering a castle or going to a dungeon to get some fat loot, it's a also question of how (and if) you can even get there.

I think this is great because it makes me feel like I'm journeying across a dangerous and unknown land, which is totally different from other adventure board games where you're just kinda taking a casual stroll and slaying some orcs along the way.

[eliasfrost]

Playing a level in Thief for the first time (the old Thief games specifically, haven't played the new one) was nerve wracking. Having only a half-finished, scribble-filled map (sometimes not even that) to guide you through the environment. It was a very tense experience to explore each level and discover the paths of guards, hidden areas etc. The sound design was a huge part of it, listening to footsteps and chatter to determine when and where to move was incredible (and still is, actually).